Review of Norwegian land-based aquaculture emission permits
3.1. Material and method
Production licenses with embedded emission permits were retrieved from the web site
“norskeutslipp.no,” which is a web site that, among other things, gathers and shares
production licenses from different fish farming companies that’s been made available to the public.
To get a good overview of the emission permits in all of Norway, 15 production licenses were gathered from three of Norway’s most significant fish farming counties (Vestland, Trøndelag, and Troms), five licenses from each county. Norway is a long country, and by dividing the country into three focus areas, a good overview was obtained. Because FTS per now is more common in Norway than RAS, it was gathered nine permits from FTS, five permits from RAS, and one combination permit from FTS and RAS.
3.2. Results
The facility’s different locations and environmental status, affected the formulation of an applicant’s size and purification requirements of their discharge.
The results showed a variation in licensing terms and purification demands (Table 7).
Prominent differences were seen in restrictions for maximum allowed biomass, feed used, and number of salmon set in sea per year, and also in purification demand and measurement method.
Common for all the emission permits was that the licenses sat a requirement that every facility must do their best to obtain the lowest possible FCR in the facility and make sure the
equipment function in the best way possible, given the circumstances.
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Table 7: Overview of production licenses in three different production counties in Norway.
County Facilities License System Purification Ref.
Biomass
One in ten of FTS facilities had requirements for 50 % purification of wastewater, but it was not specified what substance to reduce by 50% (Figure 12). Eight in ten had no demands for purification. Six in ten had emission permits based on production as a maximum allowed biomass (ton/year) and seven in ten as feed (ton/year).
All ten FTS facilities had restrictions in production defined as the maximum number of fish
27 | P a g e set in sea per year. Of these, two in ten of the FTS facilities had no other restrictions in the production than the number of fish set in sea pr. Year.
Figure 12: Requirements set in emission permits for Norwegian FTS.
Furthermore, the emission permits show that all the facilities with RAS require purification of the effluent water (Figure 13). Two in six RAS facilities got emission permits based on
purification of COD, BOD, TOC and SS, two in six RAS facilities on TOC, N and P with different methods of measuring TOC either percent or ton, one in six RAS facilities were only required to measure on BOD and SS, and one in six RAS facilities was only measuring on N and P in ton per year (Table 7). All RAS facilities had restrictions in production defined as the maximum number of fish set in sea per year, along with limitations in feed usage per year and/or maximum biomass production per year (Figure 13).
Figure 13: Requirements set in emission permits for Norwegian RAS facilities.
2
Feed (ton/year) Fish set in sea/year
Feed (ton/year) Fish set in sea/year
RAS
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3.3. Discussion and conclusion
Most of the purification demands in the emission permits were given for production in RAS, where four permits demanded percentage purification of the total production. This may lead to an incorrect assumption of the emissions from a facility, because the tonnage waste
produced and released is never specified. For one of the FTS listed, a purification demand was given at a 50% reduction of waste. Still, the emission permit lacked specifications of what substance or even nutrient that should be reduced in the waste. One concern is that none of the licenses listed, separated particulate waste from dissolved waste, giving little control to actual nutrient release from the salmon farms.
The emission permits also differed on measurement method of COD, BOD, TOC, SS, N, and P and only the newest emission permits (from 2014) sat purification requirements on N and P.
I do not see any reason for why there is not a common standard for these measurement methods and purification demands? It seems to give more control on a higher level, if the whole country relates to a common standard. It may also increase our knowledge of waste production and system functionality in land-based salmon farms, if every facility operates from a common standard, measuring the same nutrient release. An interesting observation was that the emission permits see N and P as a whole, both particulate and dissolved, while C is only estimated in TOC, which is the sum of POC and DOC, leaving a small part of DIC and CO2 out of its equation.
Two production licenses that caused concern regarding environmental impact were Bessaker and Sagelva, which sat no purification demands, and only limited production with the number of fish set in sea per year. What control does this provide if waste production variates between production of 100g, 300g and 500g of salmon?
There is, to some degree, a form of control if the licenses specify that this is a smolt
producing facility. But if this is exaggerated to emphasize a point, if a license does not specify that it is smolt production and a facility suddenly has the possibility to produce 5 kg salmon, there are no restrictions stopping them from doing so, and their waste production would possibly increase significantly.
By restricting production with maximum feed usage, maximum biomass, and maximum number of fish produced, the licenses and permits gives no room for self-improvement to reduce waste more effectively amongst the production facilities. If not tended to, this waste licensing system will certainly not improve the industries sustainability in the upcoming future. E.g., with all these restrictions, there is no reason for salmon farmers to search for solutions to reduce their emissions of waste. If a feed producer, for instance, can offer a feed that reduces the particle waste produced by 6%, and a filter manufacturer can deliver a filter that reduces the particle waste amount by 10%, the salmon farm can now reduce the total particle waste produced by 16%. For the salmon farm, this will, of course, include a substantial investment cost with the increase in the feed budget and the cost of buying and installing the new filter. However, because of the restrictions set in the license and the emission permits, the facility still can only produce a certain amount of salmon to a certain amount of biomass each year.
29 | P a g e If licenses and emission permits, on the other hand, operated from specific values of certain nutrient waste produced in the duration of a year, farmers could produce as much fish as they want to, as long as they do not exceed the emission permits. From this, the motivation to work on reducing waste production may come, if the farmers see some sort of personal gain.
It can be concluded that the production licenses and emission permits listed above gives little to no control of waste produced and released to the environment and respective recipient. At the same time, there is no standard for purification demand, equal for the entire country.
Even though the emission permits are poorly formulated, they all require an effort of optimal feeding, meaning that every salmon farmer should try their best to keep FCR as low as possible, around 1. By doing this, salmon farmers that purify waste does remove the particle waste and not just excessive feed pellets.
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